XVII.

KNIGHT OF
THE EAST AND WEST

THIS is the first of the
Philosophical Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite; and the
beginning of a course of instruction which will fully unveil to you the heart
and inner mysteries of Masonry. Do not despair because you have often seemed
on the point of attaining the inmost light, and have as often been
disappointed. In all time, truth has been hidden under symbols, and often
under a succession of allegories: where veil after veil had to be penetrated
before the true Light was reached, and the essential truth stood revealed. The
Human Light is but an imperfect reflection of a ray of the Infinite and
Divine.

ruled the minds of men, and
whose ruins encumber the plains of the great Past, as the broken columns of
Palmyra and Tadmor lie bleaching on the sands of the desert. They rise before
us, those old, strange, mysterious creeds and faiths, shrouded in the mists of
antiquity, and stalk dimly and undefined along the line which divides Time
from Eternity; and forms of strange, wild, startling beauty mingled in the
vast throngs of figures with shapes monstrous, grotesque, and hideous.

The religion taught by Moses,
which, like the laws of Egypt, enunciated the principle of exclusion,
borrowed, at every period of its existence, from all the creeds with which it
came in contact. While, by the studies of the learned and wise, it enriched
itself with the most admirable principles of the religions of Egypt and Asia,
it was changed, in the wanderings of the People, by everything that was most
impure or seductive in the pagan manners and superstitions. It was one thing
in the times of Moses and Aaron, another in those of David and Solomon, and
still another in those of Daniel and Philo.

At the time when John the
Baptist made his appearance in the desert, near the shores of the Dead Sea,
all the old philosophical and religious systems were approximating toward each
other. A general lassitude inclined the minds of all toward the quietude of
that amalgamation of doctrines for which the expeditions of Alexander and the
more peaceful occurrences that followed, with the establishment in Asia and
Africa of many Grecian dynasties and a great number of Grecian colonies, had
prepared the way. After the intermingling of different nations, which resulted
from the wars of Alexander in three-quarters of the globe, the doctrines of
Greece, of Egypt, of Persia, and of India, met and intermingled everywhere.
All the barriers that had formerly kept the nations apart, were thrown down;
and while the People of the West readily connected their faith with those of
the East, those of the Orient hastened to learn the traditions of Rome and the
legends of Athens. While the Philosophers of Greece, all (except the disciples
of Epicurus) more or less Platonists, seized eagerly upon the beliefs and
doctrines of the East,--the Jews and Egyptians, before then the most exclusive
of all peoples, yielded to that eclecticism which prevailed among their
masters, the Greeks and Romans.

Under the same influences of
toleration, even those who embraced Christianity, mingled together the old and
the new, Christianity

and Philosophy, the Apostolic
teachings and the traditions of Mythology. The man of intellect, devotee of
one system, rarely displaces it with another in all its purity. The people
take such a creed as is offered them. Accordingly, the distinction between the
esoteric and the exoteric doctrine, immemorial in other creeds, easily gained
a foothold among many of the Christians; and it was held by a vast number,
even during the preaching of Paul, that the writings of the Apostles were
incomplete; that they contained only the germs of another doctrine, which must
receive from the hands of philosophy, not only the systematic arrangement
which was wanting, but all the development which lay concealed therein. The
writings of the Apostles, they said, in addressing themselves to mankind in
general, enunciated only the articles of the vulgar faith; but transmitted the
mysteries of knowledge to superior minds, to the Elect,--mysteries handed down
from generation to generation in esoteric traditions; and to this science of
the mysteries they gave the name of Γνῶσις; [Gnosis].

The Gnostics derived their
leading doctrines and ideas from Plato and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the
Kabalah, and the Sacred books of India and Egypt; and thus introduced into the
bosom of Christianity the cosmological and theosophical speculations, which
had formed the larger portion of the ancient religions of the Orient, joined
to those of the Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doctrines, which the
Neo-Platonists had equally adopted in the Occident.

Emanation from the Deity of all
spiritual beings, progressive degeneration of these beings from emanation to
emanation, redemption and return of all to the purity of the Creator; and,
after the re-establishment of the primitive harmony of all, a fortunate and
truly divine condition of all, in the bosom of God; such were the fundamental
teachings of Gnosticism. The genius of the Orient, with its contemplations,
irradiations, and intuitions, dictated its doctrines. Its language
corresponded to its origin. Full of imagery, it had all the magnificence, the
inconsistencies, and the mobility of the figurative style.

Behold, it said, the light,
which emanates from an immense centre of Light, that spreads everywhere its
benevolent rays; so do the spirits of Light emanate from the Divine Light.
Behold, all the springs which nourish, embellish, fertilize, and purify the
Earth: they emanate from one and the same ocean; so from the

bosom of the Divinity emanate
so many streams, which form and fill the universe of intelligences. Behold
numbers, which all emanate from one primitive number, all resemble it, all are
composed of its essence, and still vary infinitely; and utterances,
decomposable into so many syllables and elements, all contained in the
primitive Word, and still infinitely various; so the world of Intelligences
emanated from a Primary Intelligence, and they all resemble it, and yet
display an infinite variety of existences.

It revived and combined the old
doctrines of the Orient and the Occident; and it found in many passages of the
Gospels and the Pastoral letters, a warrant for doing so. Christ himself spoke
in parables and allegories, John borrowed the enigmatical language of the
Platonists, and Paul often indulged in incomprehensible rhapsodies, the
meaning of which could have been clear to the Initiates alone.

It is admitted that the cradle
of Gnosticism is probably to be looked for in Syria, and even in Palestine.
Most of its expounders wrote in that corrupted form of the Greek used by the
Hellenistic Jews, and in the Septuagint and the New Testament; and there was a
striking analogy between their doctrines and those of the Judeo-Egyptian
Philo, of Alexandria; itself the seat of three schools, at once philosophic
and religious--the Greek, the Egyptian, and the Jewish.

Pythagoras and Plato, the most
mystical of the Grecian Philosophers (the latter heir to the doctrines of the
former), and who had travelled, the latter in Egypt, and the former in
Phnicia, India, and Persia, also taught the esoteric doctrine and the
distinction between the initiated and the profane. The dominant doctrines of
Platonism were found in Gnosticism. Emanation of Intelligences from the bosom
of the Deity; the going astray in error and the sufferings of spirits, so long
as they are remote from God, and imprisoned in matter; vain and long-continued
efforts to arrive at the knowledge of the Truth, and re-enter into their
primitive union with the Supreme Being; alliance of a pure and divine soul
with an irrational soul, the seat of evil desires; angels or demons who dwell
in and govern the planets, having but an imperfect knowledge of the ideas that
presided at the creation; regeneration of all beings by their return to the
κόσμος νοητός, [kosmos noētos], the world of Intelligences, and its Chief, the
Supreme Being; sole possible mode of re-establishing that primitive

harmony of the creation, of
which the music of the spheres of Pythagoras was the image; these were the
analogies of the two systems; and we discover in them some of the ideas that
form a part of Masonry; in which, in the present mutilated condition of the
symbolic Degrees, they are disguised and overlaid with fiction and absurdity,
or present themselves as casual hints that are passed by wholly unnoticed.

The distinction between the
esoteric and exoteric doctrines (a distinction purely Masonic), was always and
from the very earliest times preserved among the Greeks. It remounted to the
fabulous times of Orpheus; and the mysteries of Theosophy were found in all
their traditions and myths. And after the time of Alexander, they resorted for
instruction, dogmas, and mysteries, to all the schools, to those of Egypt and
Asia, as well as those of Ancient Thrace, Sicily, Etruria, and Attica.

The Jewish-Greek School of
Alexandria is known only by two of its Chiefs, Aristobulus and Philo, both
Jews of Alexandria in Egypt. Belonging to Asia by its origin, to Egypt by its
residence, to Greece by its language and studies, it strove to show that all
truths embedded in the philosophies of other countries were trans-planted
thither from Palestine. Aristobulus declared that all the facts and details of
the Jewish Scriptures were so many allegories, concealing the most profound
meanings, and that Plato had borrowed from them all his finest ideas. Philo,
who lived a century after him, following the same theory, endeavored to show
that the Hebrew writings, by their system of allegories, were the true source
of all religious and philosophical doctrines. According to him, the literal
meaning is for the vulgar alone. Whoever has meditated on philosophy, purified
himself by virtue, and raised himself by contemplation, to God and the
intellectual world, and received their inspiration, pierces the gross envelope
of the letter, discovers a wholly different order of things, and is initiated
into mysteries, of which the elementary or literal instruction offers but an
imperfect image. A historical fact, a figure, a word, a letter, a number, a
rite, a custom, the parable or vision of a prophet, veils the most profound
truths; and he who has the key of science will interpret all according to the
light he possesses.

Again we see the symbolism of
Masonry, and the search of the Candidate for light. "Let men of narrow minds
withdraw," he says, "with closed ears. We transmit the divine mysteries to

those who have received the
sacred initiation, to those who practise true piety, and who are not enslaved
by the empty trappings of words or the preconceived opinions of the pagans."

To Philo, the Supreme Being was
the Primitive Light, or the Archetype of Light, Source whence the rays emanate
that illuminate Souls. He was also the Soul of the Universe, and as such acted
in all its parts. He Himself fills and limits His whole Being. His Powers and
Virtues fill and penetrate all. These Powers [Δυνάμεις, dunameis] are Spirits
distinct from God, the "Ideas" of Plato personified. He is without beginning,
and lives in the prototype of Time [αιων, aion].

His image is THE WORD [Λογος],
a form more brilliant than fire; that not being the pure light. This
LOGOS dwells in God; for the Supreme Being makes to Himself within His
Intelligence the types or ideas of everything that is to become reality in
this World. The Logos is the vehicle by which God acts on the Universe, and
may be compared to the speech of man.

The LOGOS being the World of
Ideas [κοσμος νοητος], by means whereof God has created visible things, He is
the most ancient God, in comparison with the World, which is the youngest
production. The LOGOS, Chief of Intelligence, of which He is the
general representative, is named Archangel, type and representative of
all spirits, even those of mortals. He is also styled the man-type and
primitive man, Adam Kadmon.

God only is Wise. The wisdom of
man is but the reflection and image of that of God. He is the Father, and His
WISDOM the mother of creation: for He united Himself with WISDOM [Σοφια,
Sophia], and communicated to it the germ of creation, and it brought forth the
material world. He created the ideal world only, and caused the material world
to be made real after its type, by His LOGOS, which is His speech, and at the
same time the Idea of Ideas, the Intellectual World. The Intellectual City was
but the Thought of the Architect, who meditated the creation, according
to that plan of the Material City.

The Word is not only the
Creator, but occupies the place of the Supreme Being. Through Him all the
Powers and Attributes of God act. On the other side, as first representative
of the Human Family, He is the Protector of men and their Shepherd.

God gives to man the Soul or
Intelligence, which exists before the body, and which he unites with the body.
The reasoning

[paragraph continues]
Principle comes from God through the Word, and communes with God and with the
Word; but there is also in man an irrational Principle, that of the
inclinations and passions which produce disorder, emanating from inferior
spirits who fill the air as ministers of God. The body, taken from the Earth,
and the irrational Principle that animates it concurrently with the rational
Principle, are hated by God, while the rational soul which He has given it,
is, as it were, captive in this prison, this coffin, that encompasses it. The
present condition of man is not his primitive condition, when he was the image
of the Logos. He has fallen from his first estate. But he may raise himself
again, by following the directions of WISDOM [Σοφια] and of the Angels which
God has commissioned to aid him in freeing himself from the bonds of the body,
and combating Evil, the existence whereof God has permitted, to furnish him
the means of exercising his liberty. The souls that are purified, not by
the Law but by light, rise to the Heavenly regions, to enjoy there a perfect
felicity. Those that persevere in evil go from body to body, the seats of
passions and evil desires. The familiar lineaments of these doctrines will be
recognized by all who read the Epistles of St. Paul, who wrote after Philo,
the latter living till the reign of Caligula, and being the contemporary of
Christ.

And the Mason is familiar with
these doctrines of Philo: that the Supreme Being is a centre of Light whose
rays or emanations pervade the Universe; for that is the Light for which all
Masonic journeys are a search, and of which the sun and moon in our Lodges are
only emblems: that Light and Darkness, chief enemies from the beginning of
Time, dispute with each other the empire of the world; which we symbolize by
the candidate wandering in darkness and being brought to light: that the world
was created, not by the Supreme Being, but by a secondary agent, who is but
His WORD [the Λογος], and by types which are but his ideas, aided by an
INTELLIGENCE, or WISDOM [Σοφια], which gives one of His Attributes; in which
we see the occult meaning of the necessity of recovering "the Word"; and of
our two columns of STRENGTH and WISDOM, which are also the two parallel lines
that bound the circle representing the Universe: that the visible world is the
image of the invisible world; that the essence of the Human Soul is the image
of God, and it existed before the body; that the object of its terrestrial
life is to disengage itself of its body or its

sepulchre; and that it will
ascend to the Heavenly regions whenever it shall be purified; in which we see
the meaning, now almost forgotten in our Lodges, of the mode of preparation of
the candidate for apprenticeship, and his tests and purifications in the first
Degree, according to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Philo incorporated in his
eclecticism neither Egyptian nor Oriental elements. But there were other
Jewish Teachers in Alexandria who did both. The Jews of Egypt were slightly
jealous of, and a little hostile to, those of Palestine, particularly after
the erection of the sanctuary at Leontopolis by the High-Priest Onias; and
therefore they admired and magnified those sages, who, like Jeremiah, had
resided in Egypt. "The wisdom of Solomon" was written at Alexandria, and, in
the time of St. Jerome, was attributed to Philo; but it contains principles at
variance with his. It personifies Wisdom, and draws between its children and
the Profane, the same line of demarcation that Egypt had long before taught to
the Jews. That distinction existed at the beginning of the Mosaic creed.
Moshah himself was an Initiate in the mysteries of Egypt, as he was compelled
to be, as the adopted son of the daughter of Pharaoh, Thouoris,
daughter of Sesostris-Ramses; who, as her tomb and monuments show, was,
in the right of her infant husband, Regent of Lower Egypt or the Delta at the
time of the Hebrew Prophet's birth, reigning at Heliopolis. She was also, as
the reliefs on her tomb show, a Priestess of HATHOR and NEITH, the two great
primeval goddesses. As her adopted son, living in her Palace and presence
forty years, and during that time scarcely acquainted with his brethren the
Jews, the law of Egypt compelled his initiation: and we find in many of his
enactments the intention of preserving, between the common people and the
Initiates, the line of separation which he found in Egypt. Moshah and Aharun
his brother, the whole series of High-Priests, the Council of the 70 Elders,
Salomoh and the entire succession of Prophets, were in possession of a higher
science; and of that science Masonry is, at least, the lineal descendant. It
was familiarly known as THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORD.

AMUN, at first the God of Lower
Egypt only, where Moshah was reared [a word that in Hebrew means Truth], was
the Supreme God. He was styled "the Celestial Lord, who sheds Light on
hidden things." He was the source of that divine life, of which the
crux ansata is the symbol; and the source of all power, He

united all the attributes that
the Ancient Oriental Theosophy assigned to the Supreme Being. He was the
πλήρωμα (Pleroma), or "Fullness of things," for He comprehended in Himself
everything; and the LIGHT; for he was the Sun-God. He was unchangeable in the
midst of everything phenomenal in his worlds. He created nothing; but
everything emanated from Him; and of Him all the other Gods were but
manifestations.

The Ram was His living symbol;
which you see reproduced in this Degree, lying on the book with seven seals on
the tracing-board. He caused the creation of the world by the Primitive
Thought [Εννοια, Ennoia], or Spirit [Πνευμα, Pneuma], that issued from
him by means of his Voice or the WORD; and which Thought or
Spirit was personified as the Goddess NEITH. She, too, was a divinity of
Light, and mother of the Sun; and the Feast of Lamps was celebrated in
her honor at Sais. The Creative Power, another manifestation of Deity,
proceeding to the creation conceived of in her, the Divine Intelligence,
produced with its Word the Universe, symbolized by an egg issuing from the
mouth of KNEPH; from which egg came PHTHA, image of the Supreme Intelligence
as realized in the world, and the type of that manifested in man; the
principal agent, also, of Nature, or the creative and productive Fire. PURE or
RE, the Sun, or Celestial Light, whose symbol was ☉, the point within a
circle, was the son of PHTHA; and TIPHE, his wife, or the celestial firmament,
with the seven celestial bodies, animated by spirits of genii that govern
them, was represented on many of the monuments, clad in blue or yellow, her
garments sprinkled with stars, and accompanied by the sun, moon, and five
planets; and she was the type of Wisdom, and they of the Seven Planetary
Spirits of the Gnostics, that with her presided over and governed the
Sublunary world.

In this Degree, unknown for a
hundred years to those who have practised it, these emblems reproduced refer
to these old doctrines. The lamb, the yellow hangings strewed with stars, the
seven columns, candlesticks, and seals all recall them to us.

The Lion was the symbol of
ATHOM-RE, the Great God of Upper Egypt; the Hawk, of RA or PHRE; the Eagle, of
MENDES; the Bull, of APIS; and three of these are seen under the platform on
which our altar stands.

The first HERMES was the
INTELLIGENCE or WORD of God. Moved with compassion for a race living without
law, and wishing

to teach them that they sprang
from His bosom, and to point out to them the way that they should go [the
books which the first Hermes, the same with Enoch, had written on the
mysteries of divine science, in the sacred characters, being unknown to those
who lived after the flood], God sent to man OSIRIS and Isis, accompanied by
THOTH, the incarnation or terrestrial repetition of the first HERMES; who
taught men the arts, science, and the ceremonies of religion; and then
ascended to Heaven or the Moon. OSIRIS was the Principle of Good. TYPHON, like
AHRIMAN, was the principle and source of all that is evil in the moral and
physical order. Like the Satan of Gnosticism, he was confounded with Matter.

From Egypt or Persia the new
Platonists borrowed the idea, and the Gnostics received it from them, that
man, in his terrestrial career, is successively under the influence of the
Moon, of Mercury, of Venus, of the Sun, of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn,
until he finally reaches the Elysian Fields; an idea again symbolized in the
Seven Seals.

The Jews of Syria and Judea
were the direct precursors of Gnosticism; and in their doctrines were ample
oriental elements. These Jews had had with the Orient, at two different
periods, intimate relations, familiarizing them with the doctrines of Asia,
and especially of Chaldea and Persia;--their forced residence in Central Asia
under the Assyrians and Persians; and their voluntary dispersion over the
whole East, when subjects of the Seleucidę and the Romans. Living near
two-thirds of a century, and many of them long afterward, in Mesopotamia, the
cradle of their race; speaking the same language, and their children reared
with those of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, and receiving
from them their names (as the case of Danayal, who was called Bęltasatsar,
proves), they necessarily adopted many of the doctrines of their conquerors.
Their descendants, as Azra and Nahamaiah show us, hardly desired to leave
Persia, when they were allowed to do so. They had a special jurisdiction, and
governors and judges taken from their own people; many of them held high
office, and their children were educated with those of the highest nobles.
Danayal was the friend and minister of the King, and the Chief of the College
of the Magi at Babylon; if we may believe the book which bears his name, and
trust to the incidents related in its highly figurative and imaginative style.
Mordecai,

too, occupied a high station,
no less than that of Prime Minister, and Esther or Astar, his cousin, was the
Monarch's wife.

The Magi of Babylon were
expounders of figurative writings, interpreters of nature, and of
dreams,--astronomers and divines; and from their influences arose among the
Jews, after their rescue from captivity, a number of sects, and a new
exposition, the mystical interpretation, with all its wild fancies and
infinite caprices. The Aions of the Gnostics, the Ideas of
Plato, the Angels of the Jews, and the Demons of the Greeks, all
correspond to the Ferouers of Zoroaster.

A great number of Jewish
families remained permanently in their new country; and one of the most
celebrated of their schools was at Babylon. They were soon familiarized with
the doctrine of Zoroaster, which itself was more ancient than Kuros. From the
system of the Zend-Avesta they borrowed, and subsequently gave large
development to, everything that could be reconciled with their own faith; and
these additions to the old doctrine were soon spread, by the constant
intercourse of commerce, into Syria and Palestine.

In the Zend-Avesta, God is
Illimitable Time. No origin can be assigned to Him: He is so entirely
enveloped in His glory, His nature and attributes are so inaccessible to human
Intelligence, that He can be only the object of a silent Veneration. Creation
took place by emanation from Him. The first emanation was the primitive Light,
and from that the King of Light, ORMUZD. By the "WORD," Ormuzd
created the world pure. He is its preserver and judge; a Being Holy and
Heavenly; Intelligence and Knowledge; the First-born of Time without limits;
and invested with all the Powers of the Supreme Being.

Still he is, strictly speaking,
the Fourth Being. He had a Ferouer, a pre-existing Soul [in the
language of Plato, a type or ideal]; and it is said of Him, that
He existed from the beginning, in the primitive Light. But, that
Light being but an element, and His Ferouer a type, he is, in
ordinary language, the First-born of ZEROUANE-AKHERENE. Behold, again,
"THE WORD" of Masonry; the Man, on the Tracing-Board of this Degree;
the LIGHT toward which all Masons travel.

He created after his own image,
six Genii called Amshaspands, who surround his Throne, are his organs
of communication with inferior spirits and men, transmit to Him their prayers,
solicit for

them His favors, and serve them
as models of purity and perfection. Thus we have the Demiourgos of
Gnosticism, and the six Genii that assist him. These are the Hebrew
Archangels of the Planets.

The names of these
Amshaspands are Bahman, Ardibehest, Schariver, Sapandomad, Khordad, and
Amerdad.

The fourth, the Holy SAPANDOMAD,
created the first man and woman.

Then ORMUZD created 28 Izeds,
of whom MITHRAS is the chief. They watch, with Ormuzd and the
Amshaspands, over the happiness, purity, and preservation of the world,
which is under their government; and they are also models for mankind and
interpreters of men's prayers. With Mithras and Ormuzd, they
make a pleroma [or complete number] of 30, corresponding to the thirty
Aions of the Gnostics, and to the ogdoade, dodecade, and
decade of the Egyptians. Mithras was the Sun-God, invoked with, and
soon confounded with him, becoming the object of a special worship, and
eclipsing Ormuzd himself.

The third order of pure spirits
is more numerous. They are the Ferouers, the THOUGHTS of Ormuzd, or the
IDEAS which he conceived before proceeding to the creation of things. They too
are superior to men. They protect them during their life on earth; they will
purify them from evil at their resurrection. They are their tutelary genii,
from the fall to the complete regeneration.

AHRIMAN, second-born of the
Primitive Light, emanated from it, pure like ORMUZD; but, proud and ambitious,
yielded to jealousy of the First-born. For his hatred and pride, the Eternal
condemned him to dwell, for 12,000 years, in that part of space where no ray
of light reaches; the black empire of darkness. In that period the struggle
between Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, will be
terminated.

AHRIMAN scorned to submit, and
took the field against ORMUZD. To the good spirits created by his Brother, he
opposed an innumerable army of Evil Ones. To the seven Amshaspands he
opposed seven Archdevs, attached to the seven Planets; to the Izeds
and Ferouers an equal number of Devs, which brought upon the
world all moral and physical evils. Hence Poverty, Maladies,
Impurity, Envy, Chagrin, Drunkenness, Falsehood,
Calumny, and their horrible array.

[paragraph continues] Jews with Satan and the
Serpent-Tempter. After a reign of 3000 years, Ormuzd had created the Material
World, in six periods, calling successively into existence the Light, Water,
Earth, plants, animals, and Man. But Ahriman concurred in creating the earth
and water; for darkness was already an element, and Ormuzd could not exclude
its Master. So also the two concurred in producing Man. Ormuzd produced, by
his Will and Word, a Being that was the type and source of universal life for
everything that exists under Heaven. He placed in man a pure principle, or
Life, proceeding from the Supreme Being. But Ahriman destroyed that pure
principle, in the form wherewith it was clothed; and when Ormuzd had made, of
its recovered and purified essence, the first man and woman, Ahriman seduced
and tempted them with wine and fruits; the woman yielding first.

Often, during the three latter
periods of 3000 years each, Ahriman and Darkness are, and are to be,
triumphant. But the pure souls are assisted by the Good Spirits; the Triumph
of Good is decreed by the Supreme Being, and the period of that triumph will
infallibly arrive. When the world shall be most afflicted with the evils
poured out upon it by the spirits of perdition, three Prophets will come to
bring relief to mortals. SOSIOSCH, the principal of the Three, will regenerate
the earth, and restore to it its primitive beauty, strength, and purity. He
will judge the good and the wicked. After the universal resurrection of the
good, he will conduct them to a home of everlasting happiness. Ahriman, his
evil demons, and all wicked men, will also be purified in a torrent of melted
metal. The law of Ormuzd will reign everywhere; all men will be happy; all,
enjoying unalterable bliss, will sing with Sosiosch the praises of the Supreme
Being.

These doctrines, the details of
which were sparingly borrowed by the Pharisaic Jews, were much more fully
adopted by the Gnostics; who taught the restoration of all things, their
return to their original pure condition, the happiness of those to be saved,
and their admission to the feast of Heavenly Wisdom.

The doctrines of Zoroaster came
originally from Bactria, an Indian Province of Persia. Naturally, therefore,
it would include Hindu or Buddhist elements, as it did. The fundamental idea
of Buddhism was, matter subjugating the intelligence, and intelligence freeing
itself from that slavery. Perhaps something came to Gnosticism from China.
"Before the chaos which preceded

the birth of Heaven and Earth,"
says Lao-Tseu, "a single Being existed, immense and silent, immovable and ever
active--the mother of the Universe. I know not its name: but I designate it by
the word Reason. Man has his type and model in the Earth; Earth in Heaven;
Heaven in Reason; and Reason in Itself." Here again are the Ferouers, the
Ideas, the Aions the REASON or INTELLIGENCE [Εννοια], SILENCE [Σιγή], WORD [Λογος],
and WISDOM [Σοφια] of the Gnostics.

The dominant system among the
Jews after their captivity was that of the Pharoschim or Pharisees. Whether
their name was derived from that of the Parsees, or followers of Zoroaster, or
from some other source, it is certain that they had borrowed much of their
doctrine from the Persians. Like them they claimed to have the exclusive and
mysterious knowledge, unknown to the mass. Like them they taught that a
constant war was waged between the Empire of Good and that of Evil. Like them
they attributed the sin and fall of man to the demons and their chief; and
like them they admitted a special protection of the righteous by inferior
beings, agents of Jehovah. All their doctrines on these subjects were at
bottom those of the Holy Books; but singularly developed; and the Orient was
evidently the source from which those developments came.

They styled themselves
Interpreters; a name indicating their claim to the exclusive possession of
the true meaning of the Holy Writings, by virtue of the oral tradition which
Moses had received on Mount Sinai, and which successive generations of
Initiates had transmitted, as they claimed, unaltered, unto them. Their very
costume, their belief in the influences of the stars, and in the immortality
and transmigration of souls, their system of angels and their astronomy, were
all foreign.

Sadduceeism arose merely from
an opposition essentially Jewish, to these foreign teachings, and that mixture
of doctrines, adopted by the Pharisees, and which constituted the popular
creed.

We come at last to the
Essenes and Therapeuts, with whom this Degree is particularly
concerned. That intermingling of oriental and occidental rites, of Persian and
Pythagorean opinions, which we have pointed out in the doctrines of Philo, is
unmistakable in the creeds of these two sects.

They were less distinguished by
metaphysical speculations than by simple meditations and moral practices. But
the latter always

partook of the Zoroastrian
principle, that it was necessary to free the soul from the trammels and
influences of matter; which led to a system of abstinence and maceration
entirely opposed to the ancient Hebriac ideas, favorable as they were to
physical pleasures.

In general, the life and
manners of these mystical associations, as Philo and Josephus describe them,
and particularly their prayers at sunrise, seem the image of what the
Zend-Avesta prescribes to the faithful adorer or Ormuzd; and some of their
observances cannot otherwise be explained.

The Therapeuts resided in
Egypt, in the neighborhood of Alexandria; and the Essenes in Palestine, in the
vicinity of the Dead Sea. But there was nevertheless a striking coincidence in
their ideas, readily explained by attributing it to a foreign influence. The
Jews of Egypt, under the influence of the School of Alexandria, endeavored in
general to make their doctrines harmonize with the traditions of Greece; and
thence came, in the doctrines of the Therapeuts, as stated by Philo, the many
analogies between the Pythagorean and Orphic ideas, on one side, and those of
Judaism on the other: while the Jews of Palestine, having less communication
with Greece, or contemning its teachings, rather imbibed the Oriental
doctrines, which they drank in at the source and with which their relations
with Persia made them familiar. This attachment was particularly shown in the
Kabalah, which belonged rather to Palestine than to Egypt, though extensively
known in the latter; and furnished the Gnostics with some of their most
striking theories.

It is a significant fact, that
while Christ spoke often of the Pharisees and Sadducees, He never once
mentioned the Essenes, between whose doctrines and His there was so great a
resemblance, and, in many points, so perfect an identity. Indeed, they are not
named, nor even distinctly alluded to, anywhere in the New Testament.

John, the son of a Priest who
ministered in the Temple at Jerusalem, and whose mother was of the family of
Aharun, was in the deserts until the day of his showing unto Israel. He drank
neither wine nor strong drink. Clad in hair-cloth, and with a girdle of
leather, and feeding upon such food as the desert afforded, he preached, in
the country about Jordan, the baptism of repentance, for the remission of
sins; that is, the necessity of repentance proven by reformation. He taught
the people charity and

liberality; the publicans,
justice, equity, and fair dealing; the soldiery, peace, truth, and
contentment; to do violence to none, accuse none falsely, and be content with
their pay. He inculcated the necessity of a virtuous life, and the folly of
trusting to their descent from Abraham.

He denounced both Pharisees and
Sadducees as a generation of vipers, threatened with the anger of God. He
baptized those who confessed their sins. He preached in the desert; and
therefore in the country where the Essenes lived, professing the same
doctrines. He was imprisoned before Christ began to preach. Matthew mentions
him without preface or explanation; as if, apparently, his history was too
well known to need any. "In those days," he says, "came John the Baptist,
preaching in the wilderness of Judea." His disciples frequently fasted; for we
find them with the Pharisees coming to Jesus to inquire why His
Disciples did not fast as often as they; and He did not denounce them,
as His habit was to denounce the Pharisees; but answered them kindly and
gently.

From his prison, John sent two
of his disciples to inquire of Christ: "Art thou he that is to come, or do we
look for another?" Christ referred them to his miracles as an answer; and
declared to the people that John was a prophet, and more than a prophet, and
that no greater man had ever been born; but that the humblest Christian was
his superior. He declared him to be Elias, who was to come.

John had denounced to Herod his
marriage with his brother's wife as unlawful; and for this he was imprisoned,
and finally executed to gratify her. His disciples buried him; and Herod and
others thought he had risen from the dead and appeared again in the person of
Christ. The people all regarded John as a prophet; and Christ silenced the
Priests and Elders by asking them whether he was inspired. They feared to
excite the anger of the people by saying that he was not. Christ declared that
he came "in the way of righteousness"; and that the lower classes believed
him, though the Priests and Pharisees did not.

Thus John, who was often
consulted by Herod, and to whom that monarch showed great deference, and was
often governed by his advice; whose doctrine prevailed very extensively among
the people and the publicans, taught some creed older than
Christianity. That is plain: and it is equally plain, that the very large

body of the Jews that adopted
his doctrines, were neither Pharisees nor Sadducees, but the humble, common
people. They must, therefore, have been Essenes. It is plain, too, that Christ
applied for baptism as a sacred rite, well known and long practiced. It was
becoming to him, he said, to fulfill all righteousness.

In the 18th chapter of the Acts
of the Apostles we read thus: "And a certain Jew, named Apollos, born at
Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus.
This man was instructed in the way of the Lord, and, being fervent in
spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only
the baptism of John; and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom,
when Aquilla and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded
unto him the way of God more perfectly."

Translating this from the
symbolic and figurative language into the true ordinary sense of the Greek
text, it reads thus: "And a certain Jew, named Apollos, an Alexandrian by
birth, an eloquent man, and of extensive learning, came to Ephesus. He had
learned in the mysteries the true doctrine in regard to God; and, being a
zealous enthusiast, he spoke and taught diligently the truths in regard to the
Deity, having received no other baptism than that of John." He knew nothing in
regard to Christianity; for he had resided in Alexandria, and had just then
come to Ephesus; being, probably, a disciple of Philo, and a Therapeut.

"That, in all times," says St.
Augustine, "is the Christian religion, which to know and follow is the most
sure and certain health, called according to that name, but not according to
the thing itself, of which it is the name; for the thing itself, which is now
called the Christian religion, really was known to the Ancients, nor
was wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race, until the time
when Christ came in the flesh; from whence the true religion, which had
previously existed, began to be called Christian; and this in our days is the
Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as having,
in later times, received this name." The disciples were first called
"Christians," at Antioch, when Barnabas and Paul began to preach there.

The Wandering or Itinerant Jews
or Exorcists, who assumed to employ the Sacred Name in exorcising evil
spirits, were no doubt Therapeutę or Essenes,

"And it came to pass," we read
in the 19th chapter of the Acts, verses 1 to 4, "that while Apollos was at
Corinth, Paul, having passed through the upper parts of Asia Minor, came to
Ephesus; and finding certain disciples, he said to them, 'Have ye
received the Holy Ghost since ye became Believers?' And they said unto him,
'We have not so much as heard that there is any Holy Ghost.' And he
said to them, 'In what, then, were you baptized?' And they said 'In John's
baptism.' Then said Paul, 'John indeed baptized with the baptism of
repentance, saying to the people that they should believe in Him who was to
come after him, that is, in Jesus Christ. When they heard this, they were
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus."

This faith, taught by John, and
so nearly Christianity, could have been nothing but the doctrine of the
Essenes; and there can be no doubt that John belonged to that sect. The place
where he preached, his macerations and frugal diet, the doctrines he taught,
all prove it conclusively. There was no other sect to which he could
have belonged; certainly none so numerous as his, except the Essenes.

We find, from the two letters
written by Paul to the brethren at Corinth, that City of Luxury and
Corruption, that there were contentions among them. Rival sects had already,
about the 57th year of our era, reared their banners there, as followers, some
of Paul, some of Apollos, and some of Cephas. Some of them denied the
resurrection. Paul urged them to adhere to the doctrines taught by himself,
and had sent Timothy to them to bring them afresh to their recollection.

According to Paul, Christ was
to come again. He was to put an end to all other Principalities and Powers,
and finally to Death, and then be Himself once more merged in God; who
should then be all in all.

The forms and ceremonies of the
Essenes were symbolical. They had, according to Philo the Jew, four Degrees;
the members being divided into two Orders, the Practici and
Therapeutici; the latter being the contemplative and medical Brethren; and
the former the active, practical, business men. They were Jews by birth; and
had a greater affection for each other than the members of any other sect.
Their brotherly love was intense. They fulfilled the Christian law, "Love one
another." They despised riches. No one was to be found among them, having more
than

another. The possessions of one
were intermingled with those of the others; so that they all had but one
patrimony, and were brethren. Their piety toward God was extraordinary. Before
sunrise they never spake a word about profane matters; but put up certain
prayers which they had received from their forefathers. At dawn of day, and
before it was light, their prayers and hymns ascended to Heaven. They were
eminently faithful and true, and the Ministers of Peace. They had mysterious
ceremonies, and initiations into their mysteries; and the Candidate promised
that he would ever practise fidelity to all men, and especially to those in
authority, "because no one obtains the government without God's assistance."

Whatever they said, was firmer
than an oath; but they avoided swearing, and esteemed it worse than perjury.
They were simple in their diet and mode of living, bore torture with
fortitude, and despised death. They cultivated the science of medicine and
were very skillful. They deemed it a good omen to dress in white robes. They
had their own courts, and passed righteous judgments. They kept the Sabbath
more rigorously than the Jews.

Their chief towns were Engaddi,
near the Dead Sea, and Hebron. Engaddi was about 30 miles southeast from
Jerusalem, and Hebron about 20 miles south of that city. Josephus and Eusebius
speak of them as an ancient sect; and they were no doubt the first among the
Jews to embrace Christianity: with whose faith and doctrine their own tenets
had so many points of resemblance, and were indeed in a great measure the
same. Pliny regarded them as a very ancient people.

In their devotions they turned
toward the rising sun; as the Jews generally did toward the Temple. But they
were no idolaters; for they observed the law of Moses with scrupulous
fidelity. They held all things in common, and despised riches, their wants
being supplied by the administration of Curators or Stewards. The Tetractys,
composed of round dots instead of jods, was revered among them. This being a
Pythagorean symbol, evidently shows their connection with the school of
Pythagoras; but their peculiar tenets more resemble those of Confucius and
Zoroaster; and probably were adopted while they were prisoners in Persia;
which explains their turning toward the Sun in prayer.

Their demeanor was sober and
chaste. They submitted to the superintendence of governors whom they appointed
over themselves.

[paragraph continues]The
whole of their time was spent in labor, meditation, and prayer; and they were
most sedulously attentive to every call of justice and humanity, and every
moral duty. They believed in the unity of God. They supposed the souls of men
to have fallen, by a disastrous fate, from the regions of purity and light,
into the bodies which they occupy; during their continuance in which they
considered them confined as in a prison. Therefore they did not believe in the
resurrection of the body; but in that of the soul only. They believed in a
future state of rewards and punishments; and they disregarded the ceremonies
or external forms enjoined in the law of Moses to be observed in the worship
of God; holding that the words of that lawgiver were to be understood in a
mysterious and recondite sense, and not according to their literal meaning.
They offered no sacrifices, except at home; and by meditation they endeavored,
as far as possible, to isolate the soul from the body, and carry it back to
God.

Eusebius broadly admits "that
the ancient Therapeutę were Christians; and that their ancient writings were
our Gospels and Epistles."

The ESSENES were of the
Eclectic Sect of Philosophers, and held PLATO in the highest esteem; they
believed that true philosophy, the greatest and most salutary gift of God to
mortals, was scattered, in various portions, through all the different Sects;
and that it was, consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it from
the several quarters where it lay dispersed, and to employ it, thus reunited,
in destroying the dominion of impiety and vice.

The great festivals of the
Solstices were observed in a distinguished manner by the Essenes; as would
naturally be supposed, from the fact that they reverenced the Sun, not as a
god, but as a symbol of light and fire; the fountain of which, the Orientals
supposed God to be. They lived in continence and abstinence, and had
establishments similar to the monasteries of the early Christians.

The writings of the Essenes
were full of mysticism, parables, enigmas, and allegories. They believed in
the esoteric and exoteric meanings of the Scriptures; and, as we have already
said, they had a warrant for That in the Scriptures themselves. They found it
in the Old Testament, as the Gnostics found it in the New. The Christian
writers, and even Christ himself, recognized it as a

truth, that all Scripture had
an inner and an outer meaning. Thus we find it said as follows, in one of the
Gospels:

"Unto you it is given to know
the mystery of the Kingdom of God; but unto men that are without, all
these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive,
and hearing they may hear and not understand. . . . And the disciples came and
said unto him, 'Why speakest Thou the truth in parables?'--He answered and
said unto them, 'Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the
Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given.'"

Paul, in the 4th chapter of his
Epistle to the Galatians, speaking of the simplest facts of the Old Testament,
asserts that they are an allegory. In the 3d chapter of the second
letter to the Corinthians, he declares himself a minister of the New
Testament, appointed by God; "Not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the
letter killeth." Origen and St. Gregory held that the Gospels were not to be
taken in their literal sense; and Athanasius admonishes us that "Should we
understand sacred writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most
enormous blasphemies."

Eusebius said, "Those who
preside over the Holy Scriptures, philosophize over them, and expound their
literal sense by allegory."

The sources of our knowledge of
the Kabalistic doctrines, are the books of Jezirah and Sohar, the former drawn
up in the second century, and the latter a little later; but containing
materials much older than themselves. In their most characteristic elements,
they go back to the time of the exile. In them, as in the teachings of
Zoroaster, everything that exists emanated from a source of infinite LIGHT.
Before everything, existed THE ANCIENT OF DAYS, the KING OF LIGHT; a title
often given to the Creator in the Zend-Avesta and the code of the
Sabęans. With the idea so expressed is connected the pantheism of India.
THE KING OR LIGHT, THE ANCIENT, is ALL THAT IS. He is not only the real cause
of all Existences; he is Infinite [AINSOPH]. He is HIMSELF: there is nothing
in Him that We can call Thou.

In the Indian doctrine, not
only is the Supreme Being the real cause of all, but he is the only real
Existence: all the rest is illusion. In the Kabalah, as in the Persian and
Gnostic doctrines, He is the Supreme Being unknown to all, the "Unknown
Father." The world is his revelation, and subsists only in Him. His attributes

are reproduced there, with
different modifications, and in different degrees, so that the Universe is His
Holy Splendor: it is but His Mantle; but it must be revered in silence. All
beings have emanated from the Supreme Being: The nearer a being is to Him, the
more perfect it is; the more remote in the scale, the less its purity.

A ray of Light, shot from the
Deity, is the cause and principle of all that exists. It is at once Father and
Mother of All, in the sublimest sense. It penetrates everything; and without
it nothing can exist an instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the two
parts of the word I∴H∴U∴H∴ emanated the FIRST-BORN of God, the Universal FORM,
in which are contained all beings; the Persian and Platonic Archetype of
things, united with the Infinite by the primitive ray of Light.

This First-Born is the Creative
Agent, Conservator, and animating Principle of the Universe. It is THE LIGHT
of LIGHT. It possesses the three Primitive Forces of the Divinity, LIGHT,
SPIRIT, and LIFE [Φώς, Πνευμά, and Ζων]. As it has received what it gives,
Light and Life, it is equally considered as the generative and conceptive
Principle, the Primitive Man, ADAM KADMON. As such, it has revealed itself in
ten emanations or Sephiroth, which are not ten different beings, nor
even beings at all; but sources of life, vessels of Omnipotence, and types of
Creation. They are Sovereignty or Will, Wisdom,
Intelligence, Benignity, Severity, Beauty, Victory,
Glory, Permanency, and Empire. These are attributes of
God; and this idea, that God reveals Himself by His attributes, and that the
human mind cannot perceive or discern God Himself, in his works, but only his
mode of manifesting Himself, is a profound Truth. We know of the Invisible
only what the Visible reveals.

Wisdom was called NOUS
and LOGOS [and Νοῦς Λογος], INTELLECT or the WORD. Intelligence, source
of the oil of anointing, responds to the Holy Ghost of the Christian Faith.

Beauty is represented by
green and yellow. Victory is YAHOVAH-TSABAOTH, the column on the right
hand, the column Jachin: Glory is the column Boaz, on the
left hand. And thus our symbols appear again in the Kabalah. And again the
LIGHT, the object of our labors, appears as the creative power of Deity. The
circle, also, was the special symbol of the first Sephirah, Kether, or the
Crown,

We do not further follow the
Kabalah in its four Worlds of Spirits, Aziluth, Briah,
Yezirah, and Asiah, or of emanation, creation,
formation, and fabrication, one inferior to and one emerging from
the other, the superior always enveloping the inferior; its doctrine that, in
all that exists, there is nothing purely material; that all comes from God,
and in all He proceeds by irradiation; that everything subsists by the Divine
ray that penetrates creation; and all is united by the Spirit of God, which is
the life of life; so that all is God; the Existences that inhabit the four
worlds, inferior to each other in proportion to their distance from the Great
King of Light: the contest between the good and evil Angels and Principles, to
endure until the Eternal Himself cones to end it and re-establish the
primitive harmony; the four distinct parts of the Soul of Man; and the
migrations of impure souls, until they are sufficiently purified to share with
the Spirits of Light the contemplation of the Supreme Being whose Splendor
fills the Universe.

The WORD was also found in the
Phnician Creed. As in all those of Asia, a WORD of God, written in starry
characters, by the planetary Divinities, and communicated by the Demi-Gods, as
a profound mystery, to the higher classes of the human race, to be
communicated by them to mankind, created the world. The faith of the
Phnicians was an emanation from that ancient worship of the Stars, which in
the creed of Zoroaster alone, is connected with a faith in one God. Light and
Fire are the most important agents in the Phnician faith. There is a race of
children of the Light. They adored the Heaven with its Lights, deeming it the
Supreme God.

Everything emanates from a
Single Principle, and a Primitive Love, which is the Moving Power of All and
governs all. Light, by its union with Spirit, whereof it is but the vehicle or
symbol, is the Life of everything, and penetrates everything. It should
therefore be respected and honored everywhere; for everywhere it governs and
controls.

The Chaldaic and Jerusalem
Paraphrasts endeavored to render the phrase, DEBAR-YAHOVAH [דבר יהוה], the
Word of God, a pesonality, wherever they met with it. The phrase, "And God
created man," is, in the Jerusalem Targum, "And the Word of IHUH created man."

So, in iii. Gen. 8, for "The
Voice of the Lord God" [יהוה אלהים IHUH ALHIM], we have, "The Voice of the
Word of IHUH."

In ix. Wisdom, 1, "O God of my
Fathers and Lord of Mercy! who has made all things with thy word. ἐν λόγου σου."

And in xviii. Wisdom, 15, "Thine
Almighty Word [Λογος] leaped down from Heaven."

Philo speaks of the Word as
being the same with God. So in several places he calls it "δεύτερος Θεἰος
Λόγος" the Second Divinity; "εἰκὼν του Θεοῦ," the Image of God: the Divine
Word that made all things: "the ὕπαρχος" substitute, of God; and the like.

Thus, when John commenced to
preach, had been for ages agitated, by the Priests and Philosophers of the
East and West, the great questions concerning the eternity or creation of
matter: immediate or intermediate creation of the Universe by the Supreme God;
the origin, object, and final extinction of evil; the relations between the
intellectual and material worlds, and between God and man; and the creation,
fall, redemption, and restoration to his first estate, of man.

The Jewish doctrine, differing
in this from all the other Oriental creeds, and even from the Alohaȳistic
legend with which the book of Genesis commences, attributed the creation to
the immediate action of the Supreme Being. The Theosophists of the other
Eastern Peoples interposed more than one intermediary between God and the
world. To place between them but a single Being, to suppose for the production
of the world but a single intermediary, was, in their eyes, to lower the
Supreme Majesty. The interval between God, who is perfect Purity, and matter,
which is base and foul, was too great for them to clear it at a single step.
Even in the Occident, neither Plato nor Philo could thus impoverish the
Intellectual World.

Thus, Cerinthus of Ephesus,
with most of the Gnostics, Philo, the Kabalah, the Zend-Avesta, the Puranas,
and all the Orient, deemed the distance and antipathy between the Supreme
Being and the material world too great, to attribute to the former the
creation of the latter. Below, and emanating from, or created

by, the Ancient of Days, the
Central Light, the Beginning, or First Principle [Αρχὴ], one, two, or more
Principles, Existences, or Intellectual Beings were imagined, to some one or
more of whom [without any immediate creative act on the part of the Great
Immovable, Silent Deity], the immediate creation of the material and mental
universe was due.

We have already spoken of many
of the speculations on this point. To some, the world was created by the LOGOS
or WORD, first manifestation of, or emanation from, the Deity. To others, the
beginning of creation was by the emanation of a ray of LIGHT, creating the
principle of Light and Life. The Primitive THOUGHT, creating the
inferior Deities, a succession of INTELLIGENCES, the Iynges of Zoroaster, his
Amshaspands, Izeds, and Ferouers, the Ideas of
Plato, the Aions of the Gnostics, the Angels of the Jews, the
Nous, the Demiourgos, the DIVINE REASON, the Powers or
Forces of Philo, and the Alohayim, Forces or Superior Gods of the ancient
legend with which Genesis begins; to these and other intermediaries the
creation was owing. No restraints were laid on the Fancy and the Imagination.
The veriest Abstractions became Existences and Realities. The attributes of
God, personified, became Powers, Spirits, Intelligences.

God was the Light of Light,
Divine Fire, the Abstract Intellectuality, the Root or
Germ of the Universe. Simon Magus, founder of the Gnostic faith,
and many of the early Judaizing Christians, admitted that the manifestations
of the Supreme Being, as FATHER, or JEHOVAH, SON or CHRIST, and HOLY SPIRIT,
were only so many different modes of Existence, or Forces [δυναμεις]
of the same God. To others they were, as were the multitude of Subordinate
Intelligences, real and distinct beings.

The Oriental imagination
revelled in the creation of these Inferior Intelligences, Powers of Good and
Evil, and Angels. We have spoken of those imagined by the Persians and the
Kabalists. In the Talmud, every star, every country, every town, and almost
every tongue has a Prince of Heaven as its Protector. JEHUEL is the guardian
of fire, and MICHAEL, of water. Seven spirits assist each; those of fire being
Seraphiel, Gabriel, Nitriel, Tammael,
Tchimschiel, Hadarniel, and Sarniel. These seven are
represented by the square columns of this Degree, while the columns JACHIN and
BOAZ represent the angels of fire and water. But the columns are not
representatives of these alone.

To Basilides, God was without
name, uncreated, at first containing and concealing in Himself the Plenitude
of His Perfections; and when these are by Him displayed and manifested, there
result as many particular Existences, all analogous to Him, and still and
always Him. To the Essenes and the Gnostics, the East and the West both
devised this faith; that the Ideas, Conceptions, or Manifestations of the
Deity were so many Creations, so many Beings, all God, nothing without Him,
but more than what we now understand by the word ideas. They emanated
from and were again merged in God. They had a kind of middle existence between
our modern ideas, and the intelligences or ideas, elevated to the rank of
genii, of the Oriental mythology.

These personified attributes of
Deity, in the theory of Basilides, were the Πρωτόγονος or First-born,
Νοῦς [Nous or Mind]: from it emanates Λογος [Logos, or
THE WORD] from it Φρόνησις: [Phronesis, Intellect]: from it
Σοφια [Sophia, Wisdom]: from it Δύναμις [Dunamis,
Power]: and from it Δικαιοσύνη [Dikaiosune, Righteousness]:
to which latter the Jews gave the name of Ειρηνη [Eirene, Peace,
or Calm], the essential characteristics of Divinity, and harmonious
effect of all His perfections. The whole number of successive emanations was
365, expressed by the Gnostics, in Greek letters, by the mystic word ΑΒΡΑΞΑΣ [Abraxas];
designating God as manifested, or the aggregate of his manifestations; but not
the Supreme and Secret God Himself. These three hundred and sixty-five
Intelligences compose altogether the Fullness or Plenitude [Πληρωμα] of
the Divine Emanations.

With the Ophites, a sect of the
Gnostics, there were seven inferior spirits [inferior to Ialdabaoth, the
Demiourgos or Actual Creator]: Michaėl, Suričl, Raphaėl,
Gabriel, Thauthabaoth, Erataoth, and Athaniel, the
genii of the stars called the Bull, the Dog, the Lion, the Bear, the Serpent,
the Eagle, and the Ass that formerly figured in the constellation Cancer, and
symbolized respectively by those animals; as Ialdabaoth, Iao,
Adonaļ, Eloļ, Oraļ, and Astaphaļ were the genii of
Saturn, the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury.

The WORD appears in all these
creeds. It is the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the Ainsoph of the
Kabalah, the Nous of Platonism and Philonism, and the Sophia or
Demiourgos of the Gnostics.

And all these creeds, while
admitting these different manifestations of the Supreme Being, held that His
identity was immutable

and permanent. That was Plato's
distinction between the Being always the same [τὸ ὄν] and the perpetual flow
of things incessantly changing, the Genesis.

The belief in dualism in some
shape, was universal. Those who held that everything emanated from God,
aspired to God, and re-entered into God, believed that, among those emanations
were two adverse Principles, of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. This
prevailed in Central Asia and in Syria; while in Egypt it assumed the form of
Greek speculation. In the former, a second Intellectual Principle was
admitted, active in its Empire of Darkness, audacious against the Empire of
Light. So the Persians and Sabeans understood it. In Egypt, this second
Principle was Matter, as the word was used by the Platonic School, with its
sad attributes, Vacuity, Darkness, and Death. In their theory, matter could be
animated only by the low communication of a principle of divine life. It
resists the influences that would spiritualize it. That resisting Power is
Satan, the rebellious Matter, Matter that does not partake of God.

To many there were two
Principles; the Unknown Father, or Supreme and Eternal God, living in the
centre of the Light, happy in the perfect purity of His being; the other,
eternal Matter, that inert, shapeless, darksome mass, which they considered as
the source of all evils, the mother and dwelling-place of Satan.

To Philo and the Platonists,
there was a Soul of the world, creating visible things, and active in them, as
agent of the Supreme Intelligence; realizing therein the ideas communicated to
Him by that Intelligence, and which sometimes excel His conceptions, but which
He executes without comprehending them.

The Apocalypse or Revelations,
by whomever written, belongs to the Orient and to extreme antiquity. It
reproduces what is far older than itself. It paints, with the strongest colors
that the Oriental genius ever employed, the closing scenes of the great
struggle of Light, and Truth, and Good, against Darkness, Error, and Evil;
personified in that between the New Religion on one side, and Paganism and
Judaism on the other. It is a particular application of the ancient myth of
Ormuzd and his Genii against Ahriman and his Devs; and it celebrates the final
triumph of Truth against the combined powers of men and demons. The ideas and
imagery are borrowed from every quarter; and allusions are found in it to the
doctrines of all ages. We are continually reminded

of the Zend-Avesta, the Jewish
Codes, Philo, and the Gnosis. The Seven Spirits surrounding the Throne of the
Eternal, at the opening of the Grand Drama, and acting so important a part
throughout, everywhere the first instruments of the Divine Will and Vengeance,
are the Seven Amshaspands of Parsism; as the Twenty-four Ancients, offering to
the Supreme Being the first supplications and the first homage, remind us of
the Mysterious Chiefs of Judaism, foreshadow the Eons of Gnosticism, and
re-produce the twenty-four Good Spirits created by Ormuzd and inclosed in an
egg.

The Christ of the Apocalypse,
First-born of Creation and of the Resurrection, is invested with the
characteristics of the Ormuzd and Sosiosch of the Zend-Avesta, the Ainsoph of
the Kabalah and the Carpistes [Καρπιότης] of the Gnostics. The idea that the
true Initiates and Faithful become Kings and Priests, is at once Persian,
Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic. And the definition of the Supreme Being, that
He is at once Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end--He that was, and is,
and is to come, i.e., Time illimitable, is Zoroaster's definition of
Zerouane-Akherene.

The depths of Satan which no
man can measure; his triumph for a time by fraud and violence; his being
chained by an angel; his reprobation and his precipitation into a sea of
metal; his names of the Serpent and the Dragon; the whole conflict of the Good
Spirits or celestial armies against the bad; are so many ideas and
designations found alike in the Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, and the Gnosis.

We even find in the Apocalypse
that singular Persian idea, which regards some of the lower animals as so many
Devs or vehicles of Devs.

The guardianship of the earth
by a good angel, the renewing of the earth and heavens, and the final triumph
of pure and holy men, are the same victory of Good over Evil, for which the
whole Orient looked.

The gold, and white raiments of
the twenty-four Elders are, as in the Persian faith, the signs of a lofty
perfection and divine purity.

Thus the Human mind labored and
struggled and tortured itself for ages, to explain to itself what it felt,
without confessing it, to be inexplicable. A vast crowd of indistinct
abstractions, hovering

in the imagination, a train of
words embodying no tangible meaning, an inextricable labyrinth of subtleties,
was the result.

But one grand idea ever emerged
and stood prominent and unchangeable over the weltering chaos of confusion.
God is great, and good, and wise. Evil and pain and sorrow are temporary, and
for wise and beneficent purposes. They must be consistent with God's
goodness, purity, and infinite perfection; and there must be a mode of
explaining them, if we could but find it out; as, in all ways we will endeavor
to do. Ultimately, Good will prevail, and Evil be overthrown. God alone can
do this, and He will do it, by an Emanation from Himself, assuming the
Human form and redeeming the world.

Behold the object, the end, the
result, of the great speculations and logomachies of antiquity; the ultimate
annihilation of evil, and restoration of Man to his first estate, by a
Redeemer, a Masayah, a Christos, the incarnate Word, Reason, or Power of
Deity.

This Redeemer is the Word or
Logos, the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah, the Nous of
Platonism and Philonism; He that was in the Beginning with God, and was God,
and by Whom everything was made. That He was looked for by all the People of
the East is abundantly shown by the Gospel of John and the Letters of Paul;
wherein scarcely anything seemed necessary to be said in proof that such a
Redeemer was to come; but all the energies of the writers are devoted to
showing that Jesus was that Christos whom all the nations were expecting; the
"Word," the Masayah, the Anointed or Consecrated One.

In this Degree the great
contest between good and evil, in anticipation of the appearance and advent of
the Word or Redeemer is symbolized; and the mysterious esoteric teachings of
the Essenes and the Cabalists. Of the practices of the former we gain but
glimpses in the ancient writers; but we know that, as their doctrines were
taught by John the Baptist, they greatly resembled those of greater purity and
more nearly perfect, taught by Jesus; and that not only Palestine was full of
John's disciples, so that the Priests and Pharisees did not dare to deny
John's inspiration; but his doctrine had extended to Asia Minor, and had made
converts in luxurious Ephesus, as it also had in Alexandria in Egypt; and that
they readily embraced the Christian faith, of which they had before not even
heard.

faded into oblivion. But
Masonry still survives, vigorous and strong, as when philosophy was taught in
the schools of Alexandria and under the Portico; teaching the same old truths
as the Essenes taught by the shores of the Dead Sea, and as John the Baptist
preached in the Desert;. truths imperishable as the Deity, and undeniable as
Light. Those truths were gathered by the Essenes from the doctrines of the
Orient and the Occident, from the Zend-Avesta and the Vedas, from Plato and
Pythagoras, from India, Persia, Phnicia, and Syria, from Greece and Egypt,
and from the Holy Books of the Jews. Hence we are called Knights of the East
and West, because their doctrines came from both. And these doctrines, the
wheat sifted from the chaff, the Truth separated from Error, Masonry has
garnered up in her heart of hearts, and through the fires of persecution, and
the storms of calamity, has brought them and delivered them unto us. That God
is One, immutable, unchangeable, infinitely just and good; that Light will
finally overcome Darkness,--Good conquer Evil, and Truth be victor over
Error;--these, rejecting all the wild and useless speculations of the
Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, the Gnostics, and the Schools, are the religion and
Philosophy of Masonry.

Those speculations and fancies
it is useful to study; that knowing in what worthless and unfruitful
investigations the mind may engage, you may the more value and appreciate the
plain, simple, sublime, universally-acknowledged truths, which have in all
ages been the Light by which Masons have been guided on their way; the Wisdom
and Strength that like imperishable columns have sustained and will continue
to sustain its glorious and magnificent Temple.